SWIVEL HEAD TED - milestones
the yay’s and nay’s of creating our biggest headache to date
Welcome to our Swivel Head Ted ‘milestones’ page. Here we post new discoveries relating to the conception of this oddball humanoid character, built entirely from NON PROPRIETARY software (ie stuff we’ve not written especially). We have no particular affiliation with any particular software company, we’re just choosing whatever kit we think will render this guy the best way! We’re learning as we go, so I hope our journey is useful to you also.
COMING SOON - Free skin shader/eyeball model/HDRI lighting setup
29 JANUARY 2009 - FIRST FACE EXERCISE TEST
The clip below shows the face positioned in a few early positions. We’re happy how the tongue is working, and there’s a nice stretchy, fleshy feel to the skin, yet still preserving the volumes of the skull within.
5 JANUARY 2009 - INTERNAL SKULL WORK
After doing some face shape tests, Daffy figured that we should really get a feel for where Swivel’s skull should sit. In Photoshop CS3 we took an anatomical image from the web, and distorted it to match Swivels features.
From here we latticed a cheap skull that we downloaded from turbosquid into the correct locations to fit Swivel head.
This ‘chewing gum’ test is done by LITERALLY assigning the jaw and skull of Swivel to his outer skin model using Maya’s WRAP DEFORM. This is giving Daffy cause to consider using the bones in the final facial rig.
20 NOVEMBER 2008 - FIRST RENDER OF ELEMENTS COMING TOGETHER
We’re very excited by the realism we’re getting on our skin, although the shave-mental ray pipeline is breaking. We’re now exploring 3Delight
15 SEPTEMBER 2008 - PHOTOSHOP BLENDING OF SKIN TEXTURE
Since the 3D World article release, we felt that our skin textures weren’t holding up, so we took some high res images of Matts skin, and frankensteined them together based on the UV set.
1 JUNE 2008 - SWIV RELEASED ON THE FRONT COVER OF 3D WORLD
3D World have generously put Swivel on their front cover as part of their 50 VFX tips issue.
Many thanks to Jim Thacker, Richard Llewellyn & Paul Champion
15 APRIL 2008 - MATT PUTS HDRI THEORY TO TEST
We’re using an old nikon coolpix 4500 with the FC-E8 185 fisheye lens adapter to capture the lighting information of our sets.
The tripod we have is a Manfrotto 190XPPROB
24 MARCH 2008 - W.I.P. OF SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT
After much grooming, mucking about with settings, Matt managed to make this lovely looking hair. We’re liking the natural feel and the oily finish. If only it would render on the farm.
15 FEBRUARY 2008 - MATT LEARNS HDRI PROPPA
Matt has been looking into the latest techniques HDRI lighting theory, after much browsing found this. It has lots of good ideas, and simple techniques to get great photorealistic results as well as bringing the render times down.
The HDRI Handbook by Christian Bloch
10 OCTOBER 2007 - RENDER / SCALE TEST
We put this together to test how well the model rig would hold up, and to see Swivel in a natural environment.
5 SEPTEMBER 2007 - THE SETUP MACHINE ASSISTS IN OUR RIGGING
We’re so happy to be using The Setup Machine 2 to puppeteer Swiv. After not much faffing, we’re getting some great positions.
This pose was built by Nikki Willson.
23 AUGUST 2007 - FACE SCULPTS IN ZBRUSH
Before getting bogged down with facial rigs, we’ve decided to get one of our genius friends to build some Zbrush sculpts of Swivel, giving us cues for how to continue modelling him, and how to ultimately rig him.
1 JULY 2007 - OUR FIRST MODELS!
tHoC student Andrew Savage has launched straight into the modelling Swivel from the concept sketches. Exciting times.
20 OCTOBER 2006 - INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR RICHARD HICKEY
‘We all have a dark side to our subconscious. No matter how deep we bury it, it is there in all of us to varying degrees. It is the busy little part of your subconscious that processes the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life. It chooses what information is relevant to pass onto the conscious state to decide what to do.
It goes about its business constantly, at the speed of light, and only ever pushes ‘hot’ information for you to digest and process in your consciousness on the odd occasion.
In our case this deep seeded little demon goes by the name of Swivel Head Ted. He has forced his way out of our subconscious and materialised in our film in the form of a two foot vengeful teddy boy.
Hmmm? How to tell this story in visual terms and make Swivel a believable character.
There is so much bad or just plain silly CGI on our screens, and most of it fantasy/adventure, that I was reticent at the thought of using it. I originally thought about using stop frame animation with Swivel as a mannequin.
For my money, if you want something to look ‘of another world’ you can’t go wrong with the work of Ray Harryhausen. The thought of Medussa from clash of the titans or the skeleton army from Jason and the Argonauts surrounding my bed at night gives me the creeps. I know Rays quite busy, so CGI it was.
I wanted Swivel to be a one off, an out there iconic CGI character of the highest finish. When I talked to most post houses about the level of finish I wanted and that it was for a short film, most laughed and said it would be impossible, and wondered if I’d considered shooting him live action and enlarging his head! What? They where all missing the point. I had set my heart on creating an amazingly believable CGI character, and if they could not do it then I did not want to help create some third rate character, there are enough of those out there already.
So after two years of research I had almost given up. Then a breakthrough. I had heard this guys name mentioned a few times and that Swivel might be the kind of thing he would be interested in. His name was Andrew Daffy, and that he had set up his own studio called ‘the house of curves’ (tHoC).
I sat with Daffy in the pub and gave him the low down on what level of craftsmanship I wanted to achieve. He listened and said at the end that he loved the character and would help out. Ah, the relief. It was then that just for a split second I was sure that Daffy had donned a white gown, a shaft of ethereal light shone down onto his bonce and he had levitated a few centimetres.
The most common factor that has bound us together on our quest has been that we both want Swivel to be unique and amazing. We need him to feel real if slightly not of this world. And to achieve that tHoC have taken me on a really exciting journey into deep 3d and beyond. With every new render that they show me comes an amazing new wave of excitement, leaving a thirst and eagerness for the next viewing.
I can be a real pain in the arse to work with, as I set high standards for myself and the people I work alongside. So for me, I cannot give tHoC a greater complement than to say I have been able to keep my mouth shut and let them constantly surprise me, not only with the standard of the work but the continued excitement for the project.’
20 SEPTEMBER 2006 - WHO IS SWIVEL?
The House of Curves have teamed up with Director Richard Hickey to bring Swivel to life. The project will be a live action short film featuring a photorealistic humanoid CGI character named Swivel Head Ted …also the title of the film.
‘Swivel Head Ted is a deep seeded little demon that has forced his way out of our subconscious and materialised in our film in the form of a two foot vengeful teddy boy.’
www.swivelheadted.com (coming soon…)
CREDIT LIST TO DATE
Flimsy Films
Director - Richard Hickey
Grasshopper Films
Producer - Clare Spencer
Director of Photography - Adam Frisch
The House of Curves
VFX Producer - Stuart Robinson
VFX/CGI Supervisors - Andrew Daffy & Matt Estela
Swivel Modelling - Andrew Savage & Anna Kubik
Wrench, Faceshapes - Adam Dewhirst
Norton Motorbike - Andrew Savage
Electric Guitar - Loretta Okoh
HARDWARE/SOFTWARE/RESOURCES TO DATE
Workstations/Renderfarm - Dell workstations
Workstations/Renderfarm - Apple Mac Workstations
Renderfarm - Apple Mac Mini’s
HDRI camera - Nikon Coolpix 4500
HDRI fish eye - FC-E8 185 fisheye lens adapter
Tripod - Manfrotto 190XPPROB
3D software - Autodesk Maya 2008/2009
Renderers - Mental Ray (built into maya) & 3Delight (under investigation)
Texturing/HDRI management software - Adobe Photoshop CS3
Compositing/Editing software - Adobe After Effects CS3
Hair System - Shave and a Haircut
Rigging software - The Setup Machine 2
Facial Animation - Blendshape Combination System (BCS)
UV pelt software - Sunit Parekh’s Pelting Tool
Chrome Ball to environment facility - Flexify
Renderfarm manager - Frantic Films - Deadline
Shot/notes progress - Googledocs
HDRI theory - The HDRI Handbook by Christian Bloch
Hair theory - Generating Realistic Hair for “The Matrix Reloaded”
Eye Texture - Eyescapes
The importance of the Skeleton - Stuart Sumida
Facial Coding (FACS) information - Research Centre - filmakademie - baden wurttemburg
